Healthy eaters and falling pianos

See, here’s the thing. I’m congenitally neurotic. (I realize this plays right into the Jewish, Woody Allen-ish stereotype, but whatever.) I was, am, and continue to be a worrying sort, especially when it comes to health. Every stomachache is a potential cancer. Every headache is a possible tumor. Every heartbeat might be the big one.

I live in fear of dying, and it’s only gotten worse since I became a father. I want to stay alive. I want to live to be 120, would sign a letter of intent today for 90, and would be OK if I could make it long enough to get my younglings up and on their own.

So, technically, I should probably engage in a handful of things to help this process along, including, but not limited to: Exercising more; cutting down on the bourbon; eating less McDonald’s; cutting down on the beer; stop being stressed about dying; exercising some; cutting down on the wine; eating less pizza; stop being stressed period; and really, would it kill me to take a walk three times a week?

The above list — and more — are all solid bits of advice, and I should take them on and get myself into some peak physical condition.

Advertisement

But on the other hand …

I was a kid, maybe 8 or 10 or so, and my dad, my brother and me were walking to a store to buy my mom a gift. Our suburban neighborhood backed up to a shopping center, and so to get there, you would pretty much walk around the corner, get to a dead end, a meadow of sorts with overgrown grass, and over a small hill and HOLY HELL GET DOWN!

As I remember it, it looked like a flying brown blanket. Hornets? Wasps? I have no idea, but I do remember my dad throwing me and my brother to the ground as the buzzing mass just floated over us.

And that’s how I almost cashed in on a 79,852-to-1 shot, which are the exact odds of dying from “contact with hornets, wasps, and bees” over the course of one’s lifetime, according to the National Safety Council.

To get a better grasp on that stat, there’s about four people currently living in Mercer County who will die one day from getting stung by a buzzy thing.

So — obviously — why even bother eating healthy, exercising, or quitting the booze? The odds of getting killed by a hornet are just too high.

And don’t even get me started on the other ways Americans can perish OK fine it’s too late I’m already started.

Listen: You have a roughly 21-to-1 shot of dying in some type of accident. Not heart disease (6-to-1), cancer (7-to-1) but just … accidentally.

This less-than-encouraging stat is brought to you by the National Vital Statistics arm of the Centers for Disease Control, and to bring it down to Mercer County terms, over 18,000 people currently living in the county will perish in some hey-wow-gee whiz-didn’t-see-that-coming sort of way.

You want to scare yourself further? Look around at the 21 people at your Thanksgiving table on Thursday. One of you is gonna get it good. Nice knowing you, Aunt Gert. Watch out for the falling piano.

So you do see the issue at hand here, right? I want to live as long as I possibly can, yet I wake up each day knowing there’s a decent chance I’m just going to get walloped by a runaway moose, so what’s the point of substituting tofu for a T-bone?

I know there’s an answer here somewhere, a true nugget of wisdom, but I can’t find it. It falls somewhere between “live for the day” and “watch what you eat.” Anyone got a pithy answer for me? Anyone?